Brave New Films Takes On Fiorina

By Janie Lorber at New York Times

Brave New Films, the documentary film company behind a series of damaging anti-McCain viral videos in the 2008 presidential campaign, has put its sights on Carly Fiorina, the Republican candidate for Senate in California.

In the latest of three videos attacking Ms. Fiorina that the company has released since July, several former Hewlett-Packard employees who say they were laid off during Ms. Fiorina’s tenure as chief executive of the company describe her as ruthless and extravagant.

The video, which asserts that the workers are among 30,000 whose jobs were shipped overseas when she ran the company, comes as dozens of candidates in both parties run campaign advertisements criticizing their opponents for supporting policies that encourage outsourcing American jobs.

A spokeswoman from Ms. Fiorina’s campaign said the company had a history of distorting the facts. ”This group has consistently made misleading videos,” Andrea Saul, the spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Indeed, the group’s first film linking Ms. Fiorina to the The Tea Party splices footage of Ms. Fiorina addressing a Tea Party crowd with shots of angry Tea Partiers calling President Obama a communist at a rally that her spokeswoman said Ms. Fiorina did not even attend.

Robert Greenwald, who founded the California-based production company in 2005, says the state’s Senate race between Senator Barbara Boxer, a three-term Democratic incumbent, and Ms. Fiorina, a Tea Party-backed political neophyte, is emblematic of the choice that voters face around the country.

“There are clear alternatives,” Mr. Greenwald said. “There are substantive differences of opinion. We aren’t talking about some ridiculous character flaw — it’s about the fundamental direction of the country.”

Mr. Greenwald made his first big political splash in the 2008 presidential campaign with a series of films that, among other things, shed light on Mr. McCain’s real estate holdings and highlighted his relationship with a conservative evangelical leader who’d made harsh statements about Islam. That was the company’s first foray into electoral politics, and though Brave New Films is undeniably liberal in orientation, it still does not claim to support a party or endorse particular candidates.

The other videos in the latest series — entitled “The Real Carly” — focus on her ties to the Tea Party and her stance on immigration, including her support for the tough new law in Arizona.